International Football 29 March 2011

Ghana celebrate late Wembley draw

England 1 Ghana 1 (Wembley friendly 29 March 2011)
Asamoah Gyan scored in the last minute of an entertaining friendly to cancel out Andy Carroll's first-half effort for England. Adiyiah was sent clear on goal in the 7th minute but couldn't get past Hart and 3 minutes later Downing ran into the box only to slice his angled shot wide of the target. Ashley Young's shot was tipped over the bar by the diving Kingson in the 12th minute and in the 24th minute Young met Milner's low cross into the 6 yard area but could only steer the ball against the bar. A 27th minute free-kick was floated in towards the far post where Adiyiah forced Hart into a diving save, but with only 2 minutes of the half remaining, the deadlock was broken when Ashley Young's ball into the box was teed up by Downing for Carroll to fire into the far corner. In the 2nd half Ghana put England under pressure with Pantsil's shot getting deflected over the bar in the 58th minute, and despite England coming close 4 minutes later when Kingson turned Milner's curling shot round the post, it was Asamoah Gyan who had the last word, picking the ball up outside the box and skilfully evading the attention of his markers before slotting it beyond Hart from just inside the area.

Andy Carroll on target for England

In European qualifiers played at the same time the Netherlands and Hungary served up an 8 goal thriller in Amsterdam with the Dirk Kuyt scoring the last 2 goals to give the Dutch a 5-3 win over Hungary for whom Zoltan Gera also scored twice, while a 2-1 home win over Moldova moved Sweden above Hungary on goal difference in group E. Spain kept up their perfect record with a 3-1 victory in Lithuania while the Czech Republic gained 3 points with a 2-0 win at home to Liechtenstein and Romania came from behind to earn a 3-1 home win against Luxembourg with 2 goals from Adrian Mutu. A single goal in Israel sent Georgia home pointless while there were draws in group C with Slovenia playing a goalless match in Northern Ireland and Serbia drawing 1-1 in Estonia. In group A Belgium defeated Azerbaijan 4-1 in Brussels and Austria fell 2-0 away to Turkey.
In friendly matches played on the same day, Australia turned their match around with 2 golas in quick succession to register a famous 2-1 win away to Germany while Argentina drew blanks at Cost Rica and France were held to a goalless draw at home to Croatia. Denmark won 2-1 in Slovakia and Uruguay defeated the Irish 3-2 in Dublin while Chile rallied to a 2-0 victory over Colombia in the Netherlands. The USA lost 1-0 at home to Paraguay and Venezuela drew 1-1 in Mexico while Italy won 2-0 in Ukraine and Finland lost 2-0 away to Portugal.